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Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineers are Leti, and Nibu.Today’s show is a fundraising show, so, with apologies, we can’t take on-air phone calls,

Listen live on the radio, or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: 

“Our colleagues aren’t upset because you lied to Congress for the president. They’re upset because you’ve stopped lying to Congress for the president.” ~ Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., (Feb 27 2019, 1:05 pm ET, as per NBCNews.com) opened his allotted time to question Cohen’s response to a Republican line of attack on Cohen that has run throughout the day. (Republicans have repeatedly highlighted Cohen’s past lying to Congress, which he has admitted and pleaded guilty to. Cohen says he lied to help Trump, but Republicans have questioned whether he lied to help himself.)

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1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
   1. State Rep Special Election for District 145
      1. Christina Morales defeated Melissa Noriega with about 60% of the vote.
      2. Turnout was 3,022 out of 72,927 potential Voters = a 4.14% Turnout
   2. DIANE TRAUTMAN, HARRIS COUNTY CLERK – New Voting Rules: No Precincts Required! (From Jim Henley)
   3. In spite of some conflicting information remaining on the County Clerk site, this is the official statement: Countywide Voting Centers: “Similar to Early Voting, the Countywide Voting Centers program allows any voter to vote at ANY county polling place on Election Day and does NOT eliminate your voter registration precincts. Prioritization is on convenience for the voter which means all locations are open to all eligible voters in Harris County. Voters can vote near where they work, live, or go to school.”
      43. “House Bill 758 (2005, 79th Legislative Session) added Section 43.007 to the Texas Election Code providing for the countywide polling place program. Lubbock County was the first county to participate in the program during the November general election in 2006. Currently, there are 52 Texas counties who have been designated as “successful” under the countywide polling place program.”
   4. Hi Mr. Honig, Thank you for calling this to our attention. We are in the process of updating all of our materials and website to reflect the changes of  being approved for Voting Centers. Starting in this May election, voters in Harris County will be able to cast a ballot at any polling location. Thanks. Roxanne Werner, Director, Community Relations , Office of DIANE TRAUTMAN – Harris County Clerk
   5. VoteTexas.gov
   6. You may vote early by-mail if
      1. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      2. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      3. Sick or disabled;
         1. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
         2. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         3. Make sure you are registered:
   7. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
   8. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
      1. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
      2. POLL LOCATIONS & BALLOTS: Find your ballots with simple information entries
      3. ALSO, try Vote.org.
2. Trump Proposes a Record $4.75 Trillion Budget, By Jim Tankersley and Michael Tackett | NYTIMES | March 11, 2019
   1. Trump’s budget, the largest in federal history, includes a nearly 5 percent increase in military spending — which is more than the Pentagon had asked for — and an additional $8.6 billion for construction of a border wall with Mexico. And it contains what White House officials called a total of $1.9 trillion in cost savings [CUTS] from mandatory safety net programs, like Medicaid and Medicare. …
   2. … The Medicare changes would save $846 billion over a decade, in part through curbing “waste, fraud and abuse.” The administration also proposes spending $26 billion less on Social Security programs, including a $10 billion cut to the Social Security Disability Insurance program.
   3. Trump also proposes new work requirements for working-age adult recipients of food stamps, federal housing support and Medicaid, a move the administration said would reduce spending on those programs by $327 billion over a decade.
   4. The administration also proposed about $100 billion in savings from unspecified reforms to the United States Postal Service and a similar amount from cuts to spending on federal employee pension plans. It would cut $200 billion from student loan programs. …
   5. …For the third year in a row, Mr. Trump’s budget would cut funding for the Education Department, this time by 10 percent. …
   6. … The budget would not balance for 15 years, breaking Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to pay off the entire national debt within eight years. Mr. Trump’s first budget proposed to achieve balance in 10 years. The budget released on Monday forecasts trillion-dollar deficits for four straight years, starting in 2019. Those are largely the result of Mr. Trump’s tax cut, which has been financed through increased government borrowing. …
3. Trump once again requests deep cuts in U.S. science spending, By Science News Staff | ORG | Mar. 11, 2019 , 12:15 PM
   1. For the third year in a row, … Trump’s administration has unveiled a budget request to Congress that calls for deep spending cuts at many federal science agencies, including a 15% cut for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a 12% cut for the National Science Foundation (NSF), while providing hefty increases for the military.
   2. But the $4.7 trillion request for the 2020 fiscal year that begins 1 October, released today, is already drawing bipartisan pushback from lawmakers in Congress and—as with past Trump administration requests—many of the cuts are unlikely to be enacted into law. Here are some highlights so far:
      39. At NIH, the proposal provides $33 billion for health research, suggesting a cut of $6 billlion—or 15%—below the agency’s current budget of $39.1 billion….
      40. National Science Foundation (NSF) would face a cut of roughly $1 billion, to $7.1 billion, a 12% reduction.
      41. At the Department of Energy, the Office of Science’s budget would shrink by roughly 17%, to $5.5 billion.
      42. NASA’s planetary science program would be cut by roughly 7%, to $2.6 billion.
4. By the numbers: Houston firefighters’ pay compared to other cities’ departments – The Houston Fire Department has the third-largest firefighting force in the country, but by the numbers, their pay is not. Author: Larry Seward | COM | Published: 10:12 PM CST March 8, 2019 (Updated: 10:12 PM CST March 8, 2019)
   1. The Houston Fire Department has the third-largest firefighting force in the country, but by the numbers, their pay is not. … Houston had 4,119 firefighters in 2018, according to the city’s budget. Dallas employed 2,049. …
   2. … DFD pays beginners $60,000. HFD counterparts make roughly $42,000. …
   3. San Antonio is smaller. They have 1,840 firefighters. Still, their starting pay is higher than HFD. SAFD beginners make $52,164.
   4. Austin’s 1,287-member department pays slightly more for first-year firefighters. They make $52,332.
   5. Philadelphia, which has 2,567 firefighters, offers salaries starting at $52,873.
      1. Prop B guarantees HFD salary raises to give firefighters the same pay as police of similar rank and experience. Houston Police Department salaries begin at $49,917. That would give first-year HFD firefighters nearly $8,000 more a year.
      2. Even then, though, they will earn less than counterparts in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Chicago and Philadelphia. …
5. Would ‘every small dollar donated’ be matched 6 to 1 under the House Democratic plan? – House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) attacked H.R. 1, the centerpiece of House Democratic efforts to change election funding and practices. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post) By Glenn Kessler | COM | March 8, 2019
   1. THE FACTS: Public funding of campaigns is intended to minimize the impact of big donors and super PACs …
   2. … The House bill would provide a 6-to-1 match for donations of $200 or less, as McCarthy and Davis said, but with significant caveats that are missing in the GOP talking points.
   3. For instance, candidates must meet a certain threshold: They must raise at least $50,000 in small-dollar contributions from at least 1,000 individuals during the qualifying period.
   4. Moreover, while individuals can currently contribute as much as $2,700 a cycle to congressional candidates, participants must agree to accept no contributions larger than $1,000. …
   5. … As the bill is now structured, … [t]he money for the matching donations would come from a 2.75 percent fee assessed on civil and criminal financial penalties with the government, which then would be earmarked for a “Freedom From Influence Fund.”
   6. … The bill … explicitly says payments will be reduced if there is insufficient money in the fund and no money can be used from other sources …
   7. McCarthy’s claim is given 2 Pinocchios.
6. Flu may have peaked, but experts eye jump in nastier strain, By Mike Stobbe with com staff (NBC Channel 13, Indianapolis, IN) | Published: Mar 8th, 2019 – 8:23pm (EST), Updated: Mar 8th, 2019 – 8:28pm (EST)
   1. There’s a strong chance this flu season has peaked, but health officials are watching a recent wave of illnesses from a nastier flu strain. …
   2. …experts also are monitoring an increase in illnesses from a kind of flu virus that tends to cause more hospitalizations and deaths, especially in the elderly. …
   3. … This season, a milder strain has been the most common cause of flu … But for the last two weeks, more illnesses have been tied to a strain that tends to cause more deaths.
   4. Last week, about 60 percent of the flu virus samples tested were the more troublesome strain, known as Type A H3N2.
   5. Uncertainty about what kind of H3N2 will be spreading later this year recently led the World Health Organization to postpone its decision on which strains should go into the flu vaccine for next season.
   6. Last season, an estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications, the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades. In recent years, flu-related deaths have ranged from about 12,000 to 56,000, according to the CDC.
   7. CDC officials estimate there have been somewhere around 20,000 to 30,000 flu-related deaths so far this winter.
7. Boy spent 47 agonizing days in ICU with tetanus. Parents still refuse vaccines – Wracked with pain, unable to open his mouth, he was intubated and sedated for weeks. BY Beth Mole | COM | 3/8/2019, 4:40 PM
   1. The young son of anti-vaccine parents endured excruciating pain and spent 47 days in pediatric intensive care after contracting tetanus, a devastating bacterial infection easily prevented by vaccines.
   2. Despite the nightmarish ordeal, his parents still refused to have him vaccinated, according to health officials in Oregon who helped treat the boy. They reported the boy’s harrowing case Friday, March 8, in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, an online publication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
   3. The six-year-old … contracted tetanus—also called lockjaw—[when he] got a cut on his forehead while playing on his family’s farm in 2017. The boy’s wound was treated and sutured at home. Six days later, he showed signs of tetanus.
   4. … [When] he started having trouble breathing, … his parents contacted emergency medical services, who quickly air-lifted him to a pediatric medical center.
   5. … [D]octors admitted him to the intensive care unit … They treated him with antibiotics and gave him a shot of a tetanus vaccine (DTaP). …
   6. … On day 57, he was released from the hospital and transferred to a rehabilitation center. He spent another 17 days there. And it took another month after his rehab before he was back to his old activities, including running and riding a bike.
   7. Despite the heart-wrenching saga and “extensive review of the risks and benefits of tetanus vaccination by physicians,” his parents refused another DTaP vaccination—and all other recommended vaccines. That means he’s still vulnerable to a whole slew of vaccine-preventable illnesses and could one day get tetanus again.
   8. The doctors noted that his hospital bill totaled $811,929, which is about 72 times the average hospital bill for children. And that bill does not include air-transport and rehab costs.
   9. They also noted that the boy was the first case of tetanus in Oregon in more than 30 years. …
   10. … Health experts recommend a booster shot every 10 years.
8. Earth could warm by 14°C (~25oF) as growing emissions destroy crucial clouds, By Michael Le Page | COM | Environment | 25 February 2019
   1. If we keep burning fossil fuels with reckless abandon, we could trigger a cloud feedback effect that will add 8°C on top of all the warming up to that point. That means the world could warm by more than 14°C above the pre-industrial level.
   2. Needless to say, this would be cataclysmic. For instance, large parts of the tropics would become too hot for warm-blooded animals,including us, to survive. The good news is that if countries step up their efforts to cut emissions we should avoid finding out if this idea is correct. “I don’t think we will get anywhere close to it,” says Tapio Schneider at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, who led the research.
   3. Schneider’s team modelled stratocumulus clouds over subtropical oceans, which cover around 7 per cent of Earth’s surface and cool the planet by reflecting the sun’s heat back into space. They found there was a sudden transition when CO₂ levels reached around 1200 parts per million (ppm) — the stratocumulus clouds broke up and disappeared.
   4. … [T]hese clouds are unusual. The cloud layer is maintained by the cloudtops cooling as they emit infrared radiation — and very high CO₂ levels block this process.
   5. No need to panic :: CO₂ levels will pass 410 ppm this year, up from 280 ppm in preindustrial times. If we burned all available fossil fuels, atmospheric CO₂ levels could rise as high as 4000 ppm. However, even in the standard worst case scenario used by climate scientists, which assumes nothing is done to curb emissions, CO₂ levels would only pass 1200 ppm decades after 2100. …
   6. …The finding could also help solve a longstanding mystery — how the planet got so hot around 50 million years agothat crocodiles thrived in the Arctic. We know that CO₂ levels were generally much higher at the time, but they were not high enough [by themselves] to explain the extreme warmth during this period.
9. Parents of dead West Point cadet wants to retrieve his sperm – raising ethical and legal questions, By Nelson Oliveira | COM | Mar 11, 2019 | 7:00 AM
   1. When a 21-year-old West Point cadet died after a skiing accident last month, his grieving parents said they couldn’t endure being “left without any piece” of their only son.
   2. They decided they wanted more than a piece: They wanted a grandchild.
   3. Shortly after Peter Zhu was declared brain dead at Westchester Medical Center last Wednesday — four days after the accident — his parents filed a petition in court asking to retrieve his sperm, which was approved the same day, though an upcoming hearing will determine whether they can keep it.
   4. The story is drawing attention partly because it involves a military academy cadet, but it also raises several ethical and legal concerns since there’s no law guiding who can make such requests and each hospital that conducts the procedure has its own set of rules. …
10. Earth could warm by 14°C (~25oF) as growing emissions destroy crucial clouds, By Michael Le Page | COM | Environment | 25 February 2019
    1. If we keep burning fossil fuels with reckless abandon, we could trigger a cloud feedback effect that will add 8°C on top of all the warming up to that point. That means the world could warm by more than 14°C above the pre-industrial level.
    2. Needless to say, this would be cataclysmic. For instance, large parts of the tropics would become too hot for warm-blooded animals,including us, to survive. The good news is that if countries step up their efforts to cut emissions we should avoid finding out if this idea is correct. “I don’t think we will get anywhere close to it,” says Tapio Schneider at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, who led the research.
    3. Schneider’s team modelled stratocumulus clouds over subtropical oceans, which cover around 7 per cent of Earth’s surface and cool the planet by reflecting the sun’s heat back into space. They found there was a sudden transition when CO₂ levels reached around 1200 parts per million (ppm) — the stratocumulus clouds broke up and disappeared.
    4. … [T]hese clouds are unusual. The cloud layer is maintained by the cloudtops cooling as they emit infrared radiation — and very high CO₂ levels block this process.
    5. No need to panic :: CO₂ levels will pass 410 ppm this year, up from 280 ppm in preindustrial times. If we burned all available fossil fuels, atmospheric CO₂ levels could rise as high as 4000 ppm. However, even in the standard worst case scenario used by climate scientists, which assumes nothing is done to curb emissions, CO₂ levels would only pass 1200 ppm decades after 2100. …
    6. …The finding could also help solve a longstanding mystery — how the planet got so hot around 50 million years agothat crocodiles thrived in the Arctic. We know that CO₂ levels were generally much higher at the time, but they were not high enough [by themselves] to explain the extreme warmth during this period.

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